"A stone pillar from the ancient ruins of the Albanian forest! Miss it today, and you'll wait another year!"
On the first day back to school, in a dark corner of Knockturn Alley, a wizard with his face hidden by a hood was hawking his wares in a raspy voice. But the witches and wizards hurrying past mostly shot him scornful glances.
"How much for this?" Leon Evans had intended to walk right by, but the miniature stele pillar, carved from some unknown stone and displayed on the stall, was crafted in an exquisitely archaic style. It reminded him of the artifacts he'd seen in Muggle museums.
"You've got a good eye, kid! For just five Galleons, it'll protect you from dark magic and guarantee you get 'Outstanding' on every potion you brew…"
"Three Sickles!" Leon tugged at his own worn, faded robes, cutting off the babbling swindler. "Take it or leave it!"
As a Muggle-born student, Leon's parents had already scraped together everything they had just to afford his tuition. He had to pinch every single Knut in his pocket. Starting tomorrow, he might be stuck eating dry bread for lunch.
...
After a round of haggling, Leon finally bought the miniature stele for ten Sickles and half a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. He left with a look of relief, while the hooded wizard muttered about finally getting rid of the thing. It had been sitting there for years, and even the goblins thought it was bad luck.
Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. The Hogwarts Express was packed like a can of sardines. In the scramble for an empty seat, even the usually elegant ladies from pure-blood families couldn't be bothered with decorum, squeezing in with a mass of students hauling heavy trunks and giving off all sorts of smells.
Pressed in front of Leon was a senior girl in Slytherin robes. Her makeup was perfect and her eyebrows were long and slender, but from Leon's angle, he could see the delicate lace trim of the silk shirt beneath her robes. The carriage was unbearably stuffy, and many students had taken off their heavy outer robes. The air was thick with the scent of youth, especially in a car where everyone was pressed shoulder to shoulder.
At some point, Leon felt the stone stele in his pocket begin to emit waves of heat. To make matters worse, the tip of the stele was pressed, by sheer coincidence, right against the hem of the girl's robes in front of him. He didn't feel much himself, but the Slytherin girl soon noticed something was wrong.
With the jolting and swaying of the train, she felt a series of warm vibrations from behind her, as if something hard and constantly heating up was pressing insistently against her. The worst part was, whenever she managed to inch forward, the object would follow, pressing in just as far and getting hotter. The sensation was like… a magical item that had been hit with a heating charm and a vibrating hex.
She shot an angry glare back at Leon, but seeing his innocent face as he glanced around, she flushed red with a mixture of shame and anger. She wanted to use a hex but was afraid of being caught by a professor. She tried to endure it, but the object was only getting more aggressive, and with people packed in on all sides, there was nowhere to escape.
What if it's some kind of dark magic prank device?
The Slytherin girl grew uneasy, feeling as if the thing behind her was about to burn a hole straight through her expensive silk shirt. Shame, anxiety, fear, anger, helplessness… a storm of emotions washed over her. Though they would be at Hogwarts soon, the journey felt longer than a night spent in the Forbidden Forest.
"Senior, are you alright?" Leon happened to notice the girl's flushed face and the way she kept glaring at him. He thought she was just uncomfortable from the crowd and said kindly, "If you're not feeling well, you can lean back a bit. I've got some room here!"
Lean back a bit?
The girl nearly drew her wand on the spot. This harmless-looking Mudblood was utterly shameless! After whatever he'd been doing behind her all this time, he now had the audacity to say something like that? Had Hufflepuffs gotten this brazen?
"Screeeech—"
The train came to a sudden, screeching halt, sending the entire carriage lurching forward. Propelled by inertia, the crowd became a single, crushing mass. The girl felt the object behind her jab into her like a red-hot poker, giving her one final, sharp poke.
"You lecherous, despicable bastard!" the girl finally snapped, her voice a shriek. "I'm going to tell Professor Snape! He'll have you in detention for a month!"
Despicable bastard?
Her scream drew the attention of the entire carriage; even the witch pushing the snack trolley peeked over curiously.
I'm the bastard?
Looking at the senior girl's eyes brimming with tears, then at the stone stele that had slipped from his pocket during the sudden stop and was now pressed against her back, Leon understood instantly. He shook his head. He had just wanted a cheap decoration, and now he was caught in a colossal misunderstanding.
"Senior, do you mean this big, hot thing?" Leon asked, holding up the unusually warm stele for everyone to see.
Big, hot thing?
Witnessing Leon lift the stone pillar from behind the girl, the crowd had a moment of realization, which was immediately followed by a roar of laughter. As for the furious Slytherin girl, her face turned a furious shade of crimson. Looking like she wished she could Apparate away on the spot, she bolted from the train the second it stopped and didn't look back.
Having successfully cleared his name, Leon was now incredibly curious about the hot-to-the-touch stele. The moment he got back to his dorm, he placed it on his nightstand to examine it.
The stele was pitch-black. Though only half the length of his wand, its surface was covered in carvings: wizards prostrating themselves in devout prayer; ancient trolls with their hands raised, roaring in a frenzy; and many ferocious magical creatures, including several snarling dragons that looked strikingly similar to Hungarian Horntails. All of it was vividly carved.
Furthermore, there seemed to be a faint magical fluctuation lingering at the tip of the stele. Thinking of the mortified Slytherin girl, Leon began to understand.
"Tsk, tsk, it's harder than goblin-wrought armor. What kind of stone is this?" He scraped at it with the small knife he used for slicing potion ingredients and was amazed to find he couldn't even leave a scratch. Distracted, the knife slipped and opened a cut on his right index finger.
"So much for bringing good luck. Merlin's beard, what a pain!"
Leon shook his head and prepared to put the stele away. But the moment his bleeding hand touched the stone, it erupted in a dazzling light. The stele began to madly absorb his blood through the wound, sticking to his hand like powerful glue. Even stranger, a raging magical vortex materialized out of thin air next to his bed.
Pulled into the air, Leon found his limbs stiff and his body numb. A tearing pain shot through his head, and he instantly lost consciousness. His roommate, Ron Weasley, who happened to push the door open at that moment, stood dumbfounded. He watched as the vortex, like a black hole, swallowed Leon without disturbing a single other object in the room. With a soft thump, the Chocolate Frog in his hand fell to the floor.
In a hazy dream, Leon saw an ancient beast tamer clad in animal skins wandering through a primeval forest. On his brow was a strange, stele-shaped mark.
At first, whenever he encountered a ferocious magical creature, the tamer would bite his finger and drip blood onto its head, domesticating the savage beast. Later, he could subdue them from a distance merely by forming a series of complex hand seals. Eventually, he could command the wind and rain, move mountains, and part seas—he was as powerful as the legendary Merlin.
An unknown amount of time passed before a chilling cold roused Leon, and he slowly opened his eyes.
Above him was a dense canopy of leaves that blotted out the sky. A small stream, glowing with a faint silver light, meandered past the gnarled roots of giant trees. Nearby, he could hear the occasional "G'quack, g'quack," like the call of a giant bullfrog. This was clearly not a Hogwarts greenhouse, and it certainly wasn't the Black Lake behind the castle.
Staring at the towering trees—so massive it would take a dozen people to encircle one—Leon rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Their trunks were as thick as castle towers, their exposed roots coiling on the ground like giant pythons.
"The Forbidden Forest?" After pinching his thigh hard, Leon knew this was no dream.
Coming to his senses, Leon stumbled over to the glowing stream. He was about to wash his face when his whole body froze. There, on his brow, was a new stele-shaped mark, identical to the one on the beast tamer in his dream! Looking closer, he realized it was the very same stele he'd bought in Knockturn Alley, only shrunk down a dozen times.
What the hell?
Even for someone as unflappable as him, this was staggering. He had a sinking feeling that all of this was connected to that so-called "ancient ruin stele."
Unable to make sense of it, Leon cupped the icy stream water and splashed his face. The cold shock cleared his head, and he caught the faint scent of blood. He followed the smell curiously and what he saw made his skin crawl—a swarm of fist-sized Doxies with venomous fangs was viciously tearing into a rhinoceros-like Graphorn.
In agony, the Graphorn thrashed wildly, crashing through trees like an out-of-control battering ram. But the terrifying little sprites clung to it like a plague. Their teeth were incredibly sharp, tearing off huge chunks of the Graphorn's thick hide with every bite, forcing earth-shaking bellows of pain from the massive beast.
Fleeing blindly, the Graphorn charged straight for the bushes where Leon was hiding and collapsed with a thunderous crash, too weak to get back up. Leon looked closer, and the hairs on his arms stood on end. The muscle on the Graphorn's leg had been completely devoured, revealing the stark white bone beneath.
Next, Leon witnessed a truly horrifying scene. The swarm of Doxies descended on the Graphorn, and a chorus of sickening crunches filled the air as they stripped the colossal creature down to a skeleton in mere moments.
"Merlin's beard…"
Terrified, Leon began to crawl backward, praying the Doxies wouldn't notice him. After backing up about thirty feet, he was just about to stand up and run when a soft snap echoed—he had stepped on a dry twig.
"Crap!" Leon's heart leaped into his throat. He looked up to see a Doxy, clearly a lookout, shooting toward him like an arrow, its venomous fangs glinting in the dim forest light.
Am I going to die here?
Cold sweat poured down Leon's face as the Doxy closed in. If the thick-hided Graphorn was no match for them, he stood no chance. He couldn't fight it, and he couldn't outrun it. What could he do?
In that life-or-death moment, Leon suddenly recalled the mysterious tamer from his dream. On a desperate impulse, he bit the same finger he had cut earlier and pressed it with all his might onto the head of the lunging Doxy. Instantly, the sprite glowed with a silver light as mysterious runes flickered across its body. Then, it simply stopped and landed obediently on his arm.
Though he had only offered a single drop of blood, Leon felt as if all his strength had been instantly siphoned away, leaving him utterly drained and dizzy. At the same time, a searingly hot current surged through him. The mark on his forehead burned, and a stream of unfamiliar information flooded his mind.
In a daze, Leon felt his consciousness transported to a mystical space. There, before a towering Primordial Magic Tower constructed of colossal stone pillars, the Doxy he had just tamed was zipping happily through the air.
Above the tower's gate were two ancient runes he had never seen before. The tower itself was covered in carvings: mysterious beast tamers, ferocious magical creatures… and especially the snarling dragons near the peak, which seemed so real he could almost hear their thunderous roars.
Curiously, Leon's consciousness pushed open the doors of the Primordial Magic Tower. Behind them was a thick fog, through which he could vaguely make out a man-high obelisk covered in ancient, tadpole-like script.
"The Primordial Magic Tower, born of creation itself, harnessing the essence of the sun and moon…" Leon struggled to decipher the text on the obelisk. "The Primitive Taming Art, with essence blood as the catalyst, a soul pact is forged…"
Thank goodness for Hermione. To complete his Ancient Runes homework, he had crammed a lot of difficult ancient texts, and it was unexpectedly paying off now.
The obelisk described a mystical, long-lost taming art, divided into seven realms: Blood-Pact Tamer, Spirit Tamer, Earth-Rank Tamer, Heaven-Rank Tamer, God-Blessed Tamer, Heroic-Spirit Tamer, and God-Rank Tamer. The greater the power, the faster one could form a pact and the higher the number and level of magical creatures one could command. Upon mastering the art, a tamer could not only fight alongside magical creatures but also absorb their power, refine their souls, and, like the tamer from his dream, gain the power to move mountains and part seas.
After a moment of reflection, Leon understood. By obtaining this "Primordial Magic Tower," he had unwittingly become a novice "Blood-Pact Tamer." While he was still a world away from the mighty "God-Rank Tamer," he had, at the very least, crossed the threshold. He had not only narrowly escaped death but had, by a twist of fate, used his own blood to forge a pact with a highly venomous Doxy.